Just as a lady cuts into a cake of many layers, so he cut into the Hill of Hissarlik, and instead of finding one city he found seven, built one on top of another, with layers of burned ashes and debris between to mark the calamities which had wiped them out. In some places the ashes were from 5 to 10 feet thick, irrefutable proof of the way fire and sword had played about this desolate hill throughout the ages. He found his city of Troy at a depth of about 30 feet, the city which flourished three thousand years ago before the Greeks took it by subterfuge. He laid bare the ancient gate, and while cutting a trench through a wall near the gate, his delighted eyes caught their first glimpse of the great Trojan treasure, golden cups and jugs and silver goblets, some of the gold cups weighing a pound, with silver cups twice as heavy. Here were necklaces and other jewels all hurriedly thrust into a hole in the town wall as if some one were fleeing with the treasure when he was overwhelmed. Quickly Schliemann sent his men to breakfast before they knew of the discovery, and very carefully he cut out the treasure from the debris with his knife, giving it to his wife, who, concealing it beneath her cloak, hurried with it to their little wooden house on the hill. At any moment the great wall above him might have collapsed and killed him, but he was too excited to heed the risk. For three years Schliemann dug into the Hill of Hissarlik, finding ruined temples, laying bare castles and towers and city walls. When he published his discoveries, a storm of criticism arose among men of science. They laughed him to scorn, refused to believe him, to accept his evidence. They considered that he was utterly wrong, that his enthusiasm for Homer had led him astray and betrayed him into error. The storm of controversy raged on while Schliemann went to Mycenæ and dug up an even more wonderful treasure than that of Troy, finding the bodies of ancient kings buried in golden masks and with golden armour about them. It was a dazzling discovery of the wealth of the Mycenæan age, and Schliemann proved that his interests were purely scientific by presenting it all to the museum at Athens. [Illustration: _By courtesy of the British School at Athens_ THE CIRCLE OF GRAVES AT MYCENÆ, WHERE SCHLIEMANN FOUND THE ANCIENT KINGS ALL BURIED IN GOLDEN ARMOUR AND MASKS. IT WAS THE MOST WONDERFUL TREASURE TROVE EVER DISCOVERED] Not until the great English statesman, William Ewart Gladstone, arose and championed Schliemann, did men of science begin to realize that they were wrong and Schliemann was right. Thus the poor German grocer boy, who had listened with tears in his eyes to a drunken miller reciting passages from Homer, lived to lay bare the city of his dreams with a spade. Working in direct opposition to the opinions of science, he dug up the city of Troy in the very place where he knew it must be, and where scientists said it could not possibly have stood.